I think it's a fair comment about Qantas not letting aircraft fly with persistent defects like this.
Maintenance watch does provide a very good oversight of recurring defects, I can guarantee if a defect was written up and didn't go away with 1 reset further corrective action would've been taken. I know because of all the of the Maintenance Watch Request tasks that get called up every night for just this reason.
A big factor in the AirAsia crash was no oversight in general and in this case, this particular reoccurring defect that just kept getting penned off with resets for months and months.